The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.

From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."

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Friday, March 13, 2015

The claim of the
Muslim Brotherhood, that men should be ruled not by men but by Allah, is
a fraud and a lie, because what mortal can claim the right to rule in
Allah's name: the various backward Sunni sheikhs such as ISIS's
"Caliph," Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, or the power-mad Shi'ite Ayatollahs in
Iran?

Promoting such a fraud not only allows the extremist
proselytizers of Islam to acquire both dominance and exclusivity among
Muslims, as bearing the "true" message of Islam. Above all, it prevents
their power and leadership from being challenged.

Getting nuclear arms is meant to enable the extremist
Muslims to market Islam to the masses by force, and hide their failures
in technological, societal and economic development.

The time has come to make it clear to the world that
neither the West, nor the so-called Israeli "occupation," nor
imperialism nor colonialism is in any way responsible for the atrocities
carried out by these fanatics. Those are only excuses feeding off the
many mistakes made by the West.

What is responsible is social and religious
backwardness, the work of the Islamist forces of reaction, and their
inability to adjust to the progress made by the Western world during the
past 1200 years.

Blaming the West seeks to prevent Muslims from using
their intelligence to compare the failure of extremist Islam to anything
else that is Islamic.

The Jordanian Sheikh Ahmed Adwan named as liars those
who distort the Qur'an; that these liars did so only to fight the Jews,
against the will of Allah. Those who refuse to recognize the fact that
that Allah granted the Blessed Land to the Jews are, in effect,
attacking Allah and the Qur'an.

Despite being proud Palestinians, we here know that the
Palestinian Authority must not, at present, be allowed military weapons;
it must not be allowed to admit ISIS operatives; it must not be allowed
to have an airport or a seaport. Such an event would turn not only
Israel, but also Jordan, Egypt and the region, into an explosion of
terrorism, death and destruction.

And until there is a more responsible Palestinian leadership that
will not, a week later, be taken over by Islamist terrorists, it must
not at present be allowed a Palestinian state.

The unhappy state of Islam is the result of a rule by dictators
dictated by cruelty, a slanted interpretation of Islam, laziness,
corruption and internal decay -- all racing towards the social, economic
and scientific destruction of the Islamic nation.

The claim of the Muslim Brotherhood, that men should be ruled not by
men but by Allah, is a fraud and a lie, because what mortal can claim
the right to rule in Allah's name -- the various backward Sunni sheikhs
such as ISIS's "Caliph," Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, or the power-mad Shi'ite
Ayatollahs in Iran?

Many Muslims rejoiced when Sheikh Dr. Ahmed al-Tayyeb, the Grand Imam
of Cairo's Al-Azhar University, the most important religious
institution in the Sunni Muslim world, gave a speech in Riyadh,
Saudi Arabia, in which he came out against Islamic terrorism. He said a
misinterpretation of the Qur'an and life of the Prophet (S.A.A.W.) were
what led to Muslim extremism. He condemned terrorism and said that
reforms had to be made in religious studies so that they put more
emphasis on tolerance.

For a moment, it seemed as if the time had come to call him a genuine
hero of millions of Muslims in general and those in the Middle East in
particular. But many of us were painfully disappointed when he warned of
a Zionist-colonialist "conspiracy to divide and conquer Muslims." We
realized we had rejoiced too soon, and that the sheikh blamed others, as
usual, for the failures of Muslims, and was not planning to either
examine our mistakes or correct them.

Many
Muslims rejoiced when Ahmed al-Tayyeb, Grand Imam of Cairo's Al-Azhar
University, came out against Islamic terrorism -- only to be
disappointed when he spoke of a Zionist-colonialist "conspiracy to
divide and conquer Muslims." (Image source: Erem News video screenshot)

The time has come to make it clear to the world that neither the
West, nor the so-called Israeli "occupation," nor imperialism nor
colonialism is in any way responsible for the atrocities carried out by
the Islamist fanatics. Those episodes of history are in no way
responsible for the burnings-alive, beheadings, abductions, rape,
pillage and slaughter carried out by the jihadists in the name of
"Islam." Those are only excuses feeding off the many mistakes made by
the West.

What is responsible is social and religious backwardness, the work of
the Islamist forces of reaction, and their inability to adjust to the
progress made by the Western world during the past 1200 years.

The Muslim Brotherhood claims it does not use force to convince
people to convert to Islam, and that the decision can be freely made. It
claims it only uses force against those who keep the message of Islam
from reaching the masses who have not yet decided.

Promoting such a fraud not only allows the extremist proselytizers of
Islam to acquire both dominance and exclusivity among Muslims as
bearing the "true" message of Islam. Above all, it prevents their power
and leadership from being challenged. It is this fraud that makes it
possible for Islamist terrorists to use force against anyone they choose
on the pretext that their victims block the da'wah (religious instruction and proselytization).

The achievements of the West frustrate the Islamists because Islamism
is neither democratic nor in tune with the modern world. What extremist
Islam thrives on is religious fanaticism and the desire to destroy the
successes of the West, in order to "prove" Islam's superiority.

To keep Muslims from despair, blaming the West seeks to prevent
Muslims from using their intelligence to compare the failure of
extremist Islam to anything else that is Islamic.

The frantic arms race towards more and more deadly weapons engaged in
by the various radical organizations, such as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's
ISIS, Hassan Nasrallah's Hezbollah, Ismail Haniyeh's Hamas and by the
radical Islamist states such as Iran, has as its only objective the
ability to carry out such destruction.

Getting nuclear arms, long-range missiles and other means for an
ultimate end-of-days is meant to enable the extremists in Islam to
market their religion to the masses by force; to rule the world
according to their interpretations of Islam, and to use weapons of mass
destruction, blackmail, fraud and threats to bridge the gaps and hide
their failures in technological, societal and economic development.

One reason the Arab and Muslim countries find it so hard to fight
against extremist Islamic terrorism is that this wish to "repair by
destroying others" is rooted deep within their regimes, and through all
the wars they carry out with each other through proxies.

Another reason is that many terrorism-supporting countries, such as
Saudi Arabia, get rid of opposition by sending dissidents out of the
country, or by murdering them, as they seem to be doing with the
blogger, Raif Badawi,
who may be facing a new trial and a death sentence, ostensibly for
"apostasy." Another man in his 20s was also sentenced last week, by the
three judges of the court of Hafar al-Batin, to be executed by the sword
for "insulting Islam." In this way, and under the heading of the da'wah (religious instruction and proselytization), many dissidents have reached foreign shores.

With unlimited oil funds at their disposal, these men buy influence,
infrastructure, weapons, explosives and, most importantly, people. They
set out to enlist local Muslims, whom they then turn against the host
countries that good-heartedly take them in.

These men with unlimited oil funds reach the shores of Europe and the
United States; they build mosques, and social and economic
institutions. They insinuate themselves into the corridors of power and
purchase chairs at universities. Once established, they begin preaching
and using money and scare tactics to enlist terrorist operatives from
within the local Muslim communities. From these, they form a hard core
of terrorists, in place today and just waiting for orders.

Divine retribution came during the so-called Arab Spring: now it
seems the countries that supported terrorism -- or chose to ignore it
out of self-interest or political correctness -- were the first to
suffer: the terrorists could see their inherent weakness. This is what
took place recently in France. Unfortunately, if the scales do not fall
from U.S. President Barack Obama's eyes, and he persists in his stubborn
naïveté, the same thing will happen in the United States -- to say
nothing of Britain, Germany, Italy, Scandinavia and the rest of the
civilized world.

The same is true of the Arab states that hosted and encouraged the
various terrorist movements: they became the first victims. You can see
it happening today in Egypt, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon -- all paying the
price for the haven they gave to terrorism -- Hezbollah terrorism, Hamas
terrorism and Palestinian terrorism -- for allowing these groups to
operate from within their borders.

As far as "Palestine" is concerned, we here still remain optimistic.
The number of voices calling for change in our leadership -- to one that
cares about improving the lives of its people instead of crushing them
under a boot (with the complicity of Europe) -- is growing.

The Jordanian Sheikh Ahmed Adwan wrote on his Facebook page, and said
in an interview with the "Israel in Arabic" website, that there was no
mention of any such thing as "Palestine" in the Qur'an. He said that
Allah had granted the Blessed Land to the Israelites, who would be the
Chosen People until Judgment Day, according to sura 5, verse 21, and
sura 26, verse 59, and others.

He labeled as liars those who distort the Qur'an, who call the
country "Palestine," and who deliberately changed the name of the
Blessed Land that Allah granted to the Israelites according to the
Qur'an. These liars did so only to continue to fight the Jews, against
the will of Allah. We Muslims have to realize that all those who refuse
to recognize the fact that Allah granted the Blessed Land to the Jews
are, in effect, attacking Allah and the Qur'an.

Sheikh Adwan said the Jews were the Chosen People -- and peaceful. He
said they respond with violence only when they have to defend
themselves. He attacked the Palestinian leadership, which to this day
preaches the deliberate killing of Jews -- men, women, infants and the
aged -- while it hides behind Palestinian civilians, in order to
increase the number of Palestinian dead to show on television. This
display seems meant to goad naïve international institutions into
attacking the Jews for defending themselves against the Palestinians.

Sheik Adwan said that even in the 1970s, he had seen the
Palestinians' heartless, humiliating behavior when they tried to topple
King Hussein of Jordan. Then as well, they hid behind their children in
order to accuse the king of killing civilians, and exploit the
international community for their own dishonorable ends.

The Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, is in a unity
government with Hamas and is therefore responsible for Hamas's terrorism
against his own people. He is just as responsible for his own
stepped-up campaign not only against the Jews, but also against
Palestinian journalists and his own people.

The last thing Abbas is doing is preparing his people for
peace with Israel. If he were interested in peace, he would not be
escalating his campaign of "no normalization" with either Israelis or their products,
not just from what he calls the settlements, but from all of Israel. He
is leading his people to think: If the Israelis are that terrible, how
could one want peace with them?

In spite of being proud Palestinians, we here know that the
Palestinian Authority must not, at this time, be allowed four things.

It must not be allowed military weapons, especially on the borders of Egypt or Jordan.It must not be allowed to admit ISIS operatives, who are already in
Gaza and targeting the West Bank. ISIS in the West Bank would only
endanger Jordan, the same way Hamas, recently designated by Egypt as a
terrorist group, has constantly been endangering Egypt.

It must not be allowed to control a seaport or airport. Such control
would enable them to import weapons and turn not only Israel, but also
Jordan, Egypt and the region into an explosion of terrorism, death and
destruction.

And until there is a more responsible Palestinian leadership that
will not, a week later, be taken over by Islamist terrorists, it must
not at present be allowed a Palestinian state.

A coalition of "progressive" organizations,
bankrolled by U.S. dollars, is actively involved in a get-out-the-vote
effort in Israel, focusing on constituents who are most likely to vote
against Netanyahu, The Washington Free Beacon's Alana Goodman reported
last month.

The U.S.-based media outlet based its report on a confidential strategy memo that it had obtained.

The memo is in the form of a fund-raising
proposal sent to donors on Dec. 17, 2014. "The $3 million initiative is
described in the document as 'a massive, nonpartisan Get Out The Vote
(GOTV) campaign targeting selected demographic and geographic segments
of Israeli society,'" the online newspaper reported.

The memo specifically cites "young secular
Israelis, non-wealthy secular Jews and the Arab community" as the target
audience. Goodman explains that these demographics are more likely to
vote against the incumbent Likud party. According Goodman, the 2015
elections will see an surge in Arab turnout because of the new election
rules that forced the Arab parties to run on a joint ticket. This,
Goodman says, "could make it easier for the left-leaning Labor Party to
form a government."

Goodman was also behind the story scrutinizing
OneVoice, an nongovernmental organization that had received two State
Department grants for ostensibly apolitical activity in Israel despite
its alleged ties to V15, which is actively calling for the ouster of
Netanyahu.

"We've formed a partnership with [V15], but
it's important to know we're absolutely nonpartisan," OneVoice
development and grants officer Christina Taler was quoted in the
Washington Free Beacon. "Our biggest emphasis and focus right now is
just getting people out to vote."

"We are already in touch with a highly
talented combination of knowledgeable Israeli professionals and American
experts with experience in similar recent operations, including the
Obama presidential campaign," says the confidential memo, which cites
Givat Haviva, an educational institution in northern Israel that puts an
emphasis on Arab-Israeli coexistence in its curriculum, as the
organization that would lead the campaign's groundgame in the Arab
community. "Their [Givat Haviva's] Public Engagement programmatic unit
provides a perfect platform to quickly establish the GOTV effort and
their management team is fully committed to the effort, so Givat Haviva
has been chosen to carry out the Arab community GOTV initiative," the
memo states.

Ameinu President Kenneth Bob told Goodman that
the memo was just one of several drafts and denied that his
organization was campaigning for any specific party. He even noted that
the get-out-the-vote efforts was not designed to help any particular
candidate. "I'm sure you know that in the Arab sector, the Likud also
gets votes, they have strong pockets of support," Bob told Goodman. "I'm
very comfortable with this as a nonpartisan effort."

Goodman noted that his voter-turnout efforts
were run independently of V15, although he conceded that the two
organizations did have ties in the past. "Bob initially told the Free
Beacon that the initiative outlined in the memo had no connection to the
V15 campaign or former Obama aide Jeremy Bird," Goodman wrote. "He
later said that V15 and Bird's consulting group 270 Strategies were
involved in the discussions early on, but have since parted ways with
Ameinu."

According to a report on the Channel 1's
nightly news from February 11, 2015, the heads of several Arab
municipalities and other Arab politicos travelled to the United states
where they were provided training aimed at increasing Arab turnout. They
told the Channel 1 crew about the new tools they had received and said
they the workshops provided them more insight. They said the trip was
funded by "various NGOs and organizations," including Ameinu.

Mohammad Darawshe, the co-executive director of the
Givat Haviva Institute, participated in the U.S. visit. Darawshe, a
founder of OneVoice's Israel branch, served as the director of the
Abraham Fund Initiatives. According to Goodman, Darawshe was the "main
organizer" of the visit, and he made sure the other members of the
delegation would get their U.S. visas by means of a fast-track process.
Givat Haviva received State Department funding in 2011, 2012 and 2013,
Goodman reported.

The
following report is from MEMRI's Counter-Radicalization Initiative.

In a recent TV show,
Kuwaiti researcher Abdulazziz Al-Qattan said that the ISIS ideology existed
long before the emergence of ISIS and Al-Qaeda, and that it was a product of Islamic
heritage. "All the books of Islamic heritage, without exception... have
enough ISIS ideology to turn your hair white," said Al-Qattan, speaking on
Al-Mayadeen TV on March 3, 2015.

Abdulaziz Al-Qattan: "ISIS did not come out of nowhere. It's not an aberration.
By no means. ISIS adopts the Salafi-Wahhabi ideology of Al-Qaeda. If you look
at Durur Al-Saniyah by Muhammad Ibn Abd Al-Wahhab, you will
see that ISIS is implementing the ideas of that book to the letter. They are
doing it step by step, word by word.

[…]

"The problem of us Arabs is that we are not
being honest with ourselves. We do not acknowledge our mistakes. We refuse to
break away from that heritage. Our Islamic heritage is a minefield of these
deviant ideas. Unfortunately, even some contemporary muftis, sheiks, and
Islamic scholars subscribe to this reactionary ideology and to this
backwardness. To this day, some of them consider photography to be prohibited
polytheism, and view statuses as idols that are worshipped instead of Allah.

"Even in the days of the Islamic conquests,
'Amr Ibn Al-'As did not destroy the Sphinx and did not shatter statues in
Egypt. I cannot imagine Islam, or any civilization, without art. I cannot
imagine the beauty of Islam without art. Art is sublime. Art means progress.
Art means civilization. Can you possibly imagine humanity without art?
Inconceivable! Inconceivable!

[…]

"The ISIS [ideology] existed even before
ISIS and Al-Qaeda emerged, but we turned a blind eye, and some Arab governments
still prefer not to face the plain truth. All the books of Islamic heritage,
without exception – from all Islamic sects and denominations – have enough ISIS
ideology to turn your hair white. Therefore, what we need to do is sift through
Islamic heritage. We must go back to the book of Allah, for it gives guidance
to humanity. Islam does not, under any circumstances, run counter to human
nature. Allah created Man free and gave him freedom of thought, but the problem
is that the Muslims have begun to worship people. We have begun to worship our
heritage. We have begun to worship books.

[…]

"I say "Islamic heritage," but
that is not what it is. It is the heritage of the jurisprudents, not of the
Prophet Muhammad. The books of Islamic heritage – Al-Bukhari and Muslim hadith collections,
and the other canonical hadith books, as well as the Kitab
Al-Kafi and all the other books of the Shiites... All these books need
to be sifted through by real institutions. "These stories should be sifted
through in order to filter out all their blemishes. Politics played a role in
the evolvement of this heritage. The Islamic scholars of the Sultan's court
played a role in this. The hadith narrators were not
infallible. Some of them were liars, cheats, and so on."

The foreign minister can smell the surrender
of the West to Iran's nuclear ambitions and doesn't even feel the need
to downplay their victory.

Iran's
state-run press is reporting that foreign minister Javad Zarif has
declared "victory" in the negotiations over Iran's nuclear program. He
said no matter how the negotiations conclude, Tehran has come out “the
winner.”

Javad
Zarif, the Islamic Republic’s foreign minister, stated in remarks
before the country’s powerful Assembly of Experts, which recently installed a hardline new cleric as its leader, that the nuclear negotiations have established Tehran as a global power broker.“We
are the winner whether the [nuclear] negotiations yield results or
not,” Zarif was quoted as saying before the assembly by the Tasnim News
Agency. “The capital we have obtained over the years is dignity and
self-esteem, a capital that could not be retaken.”Zarif’s
comments were accompanied by a host of bold military displays by Tehran
in recent weeks, including the announcement of one new weapon that
Iranian military leaders have described as a “very special” missile.As
the United States and Iran rush to hash out a final nuclear agreement
ahead of a self-imposed July deadline, Zarif also lashed out at
congressional Republicans who have expressed skepticism over the Obama
administration’s diplomacy and have fought to exert control over the
implementation of any deal.Zarif
dismissed as a “propaganda ploy” a recent letter signed by 47 Senate
Republicans that warned Tehran against placing too much stock in a weak
deal agreed to by the Obama administration.Meanwhile,
Iran’s military continues to unveil a range of new strategic missiles
and advanced weapons meant to project strength throughout the region.Iran
disclosed during military drills late in February that it is developing
a missile capable of being fired from a submerged submarine. Top
Iranian military leaders have described the missile as a “very special weapon,” according to IHS Jane’s, a defense industry news source.

The
foreign minister's statements are a taunt aimed directly at President
Obama. And in a very large way, the FM is correct. Any agreement that
maintains Iran's ability to quickly construct a nuclear weapon is a
victory for the Islamic republic.

From
top to bottom, this deal stinks. And given Iran's propensity to
interpret agreements any way they wish – as they did with centrifuge
technology in the interim agreement – even strict controls on Iran's
uranium processing will likely be honored in the breach.

The
U.S. will dutifully return to the negotiating table and continue to
cave to Iranian demands. The foreign minister can smell the surrender
of the West to Iran's nuclear ambitions and doesn't even feel the need
to downplay their victory.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tells Israel
Hayom that it is "mistaken" to assume he will win the election, says
his job is to lead in a sober manner • PM: The people who supported Oslo
haven't sobered up yet and still believe their own delusions.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is signaling
to right-wing voters that there is a real danger that he and his Likud
Party could lose the leadership of Israel to Zionist Union leaders Isaac
Herzog and Tzipi Livni in the national election next week.

In a conversation with Israel Hayom, Netanyahu
said that "some right-wing voters mistakenly believed that I will be
elected no matter what, so they decided to support other parties. But we
can't afford [to think this way] in this election. The danger that
Tzipi and Herzog will rise to power with the help of [Yesh Atid
Chairman] Yair Lapid and the Joint Arab List is more tangible than
ever."

"The only way to ensure that the next
government is headed by the national camp is to vote for Likud," he
added. Touching on the Israeli practice where the head of every party
makes a recommendation as to who they feel should assemble the coalition
and lead the government, Netanyahu stressed that "[Kulanu Chairman
Moshe] Kahlon and [Yisrael Beytenu Chairman Avigdor] Lieberman have not
pledged to recommend me. Moreover, Kahlon's No. 2 Yoav Galant,
specifically said he would recommend Herzog. So if you want me as prime
minister, you have to vote for Likud."

The prime minister declared that his famous
address at Bar-Ilan University in 2009, in which he first called for a
two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, was no longer
relevant. "The reality has shifted. Today, every territory that we
evacuate will be taken over by radical Islamists under the auspices of
Iran. That is what happened when we pulled out of Lebanon and it is what
happened when we evacuated Gaza, and we must not allow it to happen in
Judea and Samaria as well. That is why there will not be any
evacuations."

Netanyahu declared that his next government
will neither release Palestinian prisoners nor freeze construction in
the settlements.

Netanyahu also lashed out at former Mossad
chief Meir Dagan, who criticized him at an anti-Netanyahu rally last
Saturday. "I don't understand how Dagan, who cursed me and insulted me,
asked twice to serve as Mossad director under me. I approved his first
request, and rejected his second, and perhaps as a result of that he is
coming after me for personal reasons. Of course I don't agree with his
left-wing agenda. He was wrong when he forecast that the Muslim
Brotherhood would not seek the leadership of Egypt. In the end, not only
did they seek it, they succeeded in achieving it. My job as prime
minister is to lead the country in a sober manner. People who supported
Oslo haven't sobered up yet and still believe their own delusions.
Security cannot be founded on delusions."

On Wednesday, Netanyahu told supporters in
Netanya that "I am telling our friends in the national camp that anyone
who wants to vote for another right-wing party is actually increasing
that risk. Because the fewer votes Likud gets, and the wider the gap
[between Likud and the Zionist Union] grows, so does the danger that
Tzipi and Herzog will assemble the next coalition. That is why it is
imperative not to vote for other parties."

At the start of his address, Netanyahu
remarked on the choice of the Park Hotel in Netanya as the venue. In
2002, 30 Israelis were murdered at the same hotel in a Passover eve
suicide bombing. "We remember those days and we are determined to make
sure that they never return. Over the last six years we have undergone
the kind of enormous upheaval that we haven't seen here in almost a
hundred years -- one regional earthquake that created upheaval and is
now affecting all the countries in the region. Nations are collapsing,
and radical Islam is insinuating itself into the cracks that emerge and
washing over the entire region. It is sending its deadly tentacles in
the direction of our borders in the north and the south. We are fighting
it, and unlike other countries we have managed to maintain security. We
are fighting against the biggest patron of terrorism -- Iran."

Netanyahu remarked that "in the past, the border was
right here, in the suburbs of Netanya. Astoundingly, there are people
who want the restore that border to where it was. No us. Not me. I won't
allow that to happen. We are looking out for [Israel's] security. We
don't want terrorists to be able to get here. We know that if we are not
there, they will be here. It takes standing up to the efforts to
restore the pre-1967 borders and the efforts to divide Jerusalem. I will
never divide Jerusalem, the same way I will never want to go back to
pre-1967 borders."

The arrests have, once again,
cast a spotlight on the problem of radical Islam in Catalonia, which has
the largest Muslim population in Spain. The region is home to an
estimated 465,000 Muslims, who account for more than 6% of the total
Catalan population of 7.5 million.Catalonia is home to approximately 465,000 Muslims. At least 10% of
them are estimated to be "radicals" who are hardcore believers in the
"doctrine of jihadism." — Jofre Montoto, Catalan terrorism analyst.In February, the lower house of the Spanish Congress approved
far-reaching changes to the country's penal code, as a way to combat
Islamic extremism and support for the Islamic State.Under the new law, anyone convicted of carrying out a terrorist
attack will be subject to a life sentence (35 years) without the
possibility of parole. The law also calls for 20-year sentences for
anyone convicted of supplying weapons to terrorists, or ten-year
sentences for funding terror networks.

Spanish police have arrested a Moroccan woman on suspicion of running a jihadist recruiting network for the Islamic State.

Samira Yerou, 32, was arrested
at Barcelona's El Prat airport on March 7 upon her arrival on a flight
from Turkey, where authorities had detained her for trying illegally to
enter Syria with her three-year-old son, a Spanish citizen.

Police say Yerou, who lives in Rubí, a Catalan town situated 15
kilometers north of Barcelona, disappeared in December 2014, while her
son's father, a Moroccan-Spaniard, was away on a trip to Morocco.
Spanish authorities issued an international warrant for Yerou's arrest.

In a statement,
the Spanish Interior Ministry said Yerou had specialized in recruiting
women from Europe and North Africa to join the Islamic State. She
allegedly became interested in militant Islam after visiting Morocco
during the summer of 2013, and later became radicalized through the
Internet by "spending many hours consulting" jihadist websites. The boy,
who was unharmed, has been returned to his father.

Samira
Yerou was arrested March 7 at Barcelona's airport, on suspicion of
running a jihadist recruiting network. (Image source: Spanish Ministry
of the Interior)

Yerou is one of at least 50 jihadists who have been arrested in Spain
during the past twelve months alone. Most of the arrests have taken
place in Catalonia and in Spain's North African exclaves of Ceuta and
Melilla.

In February, police arrested four jihadists — two in Melilla, one in
Barcelona and one in the Catalan city of Girona — for training and
recruiting for the Islamic State.

In a statement,
the Interior Ministry said that the two arrested in Melilla used
Internet platforms to post "all types of terrorist propaganda,
especially from the group known as Daesh." (Daesh is the Arabic acronym
for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.) The two edited and
translated the material into Spanish and were also responsible for
recruiting women as potential jihadist fighters.

The two jihadists arrested in Catalonia were allegedly responsible
for a 2014 social media campaign aimed at generating support for the
Islamic State. The campaign involved posters that included images of
famous Spanish landmarks and monuments emblazoned with Arabic slogans
such as, "We are all the Islamic State" and "Long Live the Islamic
State."

In January, police in Ceuta arrested
four jihadists — Spanish citizens of Moroccan origin — who were "fully
prepared and ready to attack in Spain" on behalf of the Islamic State.
Police seized a pistol, combat uniforms, machetes, automobile license
plates, documents and computer equipment.

In December, police in Barcelona arrested
a single mother named Francis Peña Orellana for allegedly recruiting
young women to join the Islamic State. Peña Orellana, a 25-year-old
Chilean national, was among seven jihadists arrested in Barcelona, Ceuta
and Melilla for belonging to the network. Police said the group, which
was "consciously convinced and radicalized in the service of the Islamic
State," used social media to convince at least a dozen females to marry
jihadists or to become jihadist fighters themselves.

The arrests have, once again, cast a spotlight on the problem
of radical Islam in Catalonia, which has the largest Muslim population
in Spain. The region is home to an estimated 465,000 Muslims, who
account for more than 6% of the total Catalan population of 7.5 million.

In his book "Jihadism: The Radical Islamic Threat to Catalonia," the Catalan terrorism analyst Jofre Montoto estimates
that at least 10% of the Muslims in Catalonia are "radicals" who are
hardcore believers in the "doctrine of jihadism." He describes
Catalonia, which constitutes an important transit point and destination
for migration flows, as the "Mediterranean corridor of jihadism."

According to the Spanish Interior Ministry, Muslims are more likely to become radicalized
in Catalonia than in any other region in Spain. A new computer model,
which seeks to determine the "risk of violent radicalization" in any
part of Spain based on census data, puts the Spanish region of Andalusia
in second place, followed by Valencia and Madrid. The numbers show that
the risk of radicalization is three times greater in Catalonia than in
Madrid.

At the same time, Ceuta and Melilla have also emerged
as key centers for the recruitment of Islamic radicals. Over the past
twelve months, police have dismantled at least five jihadist recruitment
networks linked to the two cities, which border the Rif, one of the
poorest and most underdeveloped regions of Morocco.

According to an analysis published by the Spanish newspaper La Rioja,
the population of Melilla has increased by 60% over the past 25 years,
three times the Spanish average; roughly 15% of the city's population
consists of illegal immigrants from Morocco. The unemployment rate in
Melilla remains consistently above 30% and the smuggling of contraband
comprises a significant portion of the city's economy.

The La Cañada de Hidum neighborhood of Melilla is considered the
second-most dangerous in the European Union, followed only by the El
Príncipe district in Ceuta. The areas, which are marked by high rates of
youth unemployment, truancy, illiteracy, drug use and crime, are
fertile ground for jihadist recruiters.

One of the four jihadists arrested
in Ceuta in January was Fareed Mohammed Al Lal, a Moroccan-Spaniard who
had three prior convictions for the illegal possession and use of
firearms. Police say he became radicalized in prison where he was
exposed to Salafism. This form of Islam is a virulently anti-Western
ideology, committed to re-establishing an Islamic Caliphate (empire)
across the Middle East, North Africa and parts of Europe, including
Spain, which Salafists view as a Muslim state that must be reconquered
for Islam.

Much of Spain was ruled by Muslim conquerors from 711 to 1492;
Salafists believe that the territories the Muslims lost during the
Spanish Reconquista still belong to them, and that they have a right to
return and establish their rule there — a belief based on the Islamic
doctrine that territories once occupied by Muslims must forever remain
under Muslim domination.

Since the raid in Ceuta, the Interior Ministry has stepped up its monitoring
of at least 150 Muslim inmates, to prevent them from organizing
jihadist activities in and from Spanish prisons. These include between
50 and 60 inmates who are in prison on terrorism charges, another 10 or
15 who are in prison on other charges but who have displayed an interest
in radical Islam, and about 70 or 80 inmates who are believed to be
susceptible to radicalization.

Meanwhile, a poll conducted immediately after the terrorist attacks in Paris found
that 58% (up from 31% in April 2012) of Spaniards believe it is likely
that a major terrorist attack on the scale of the 2004 Madrid train
bombings will happen again, and 64% (up from 44% in April 2012) say it
is probable that "isolated attack of Islamic character" will occur.

In February, the lower house of the Spanish Congress approved far-reaching changes to the country's penal code, as a way to combat Islamic extremism and support for the Islamic State.

Under the new law, anyone convicted of carrying out a terrorist
attack will be subject to a life sentence (35 years) without the
possibility of parole.

The law also calls for 20-year sentences for anyone convicted of
supplying weapons to terrorists, or ten-year sentences for funding
terror networks. Spanish citizens who join foreign terrorist groups can
also receive up to five years in prison. The Senate is expected to
approve the bill before the summer, and the new measures are set to take
effect in 2016.

Unlike similar laws in Britain and France,
however, the new law does not include a provision to revoke Spanish
citizenship from terrorism suspects. At last count, least 100 Spanish
jihadists are believed to have joined the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.

Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute.
He is also Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based
Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook and on Twitter.

FrontPage Editor’s note: Below is the transcript to David
Horowitz’s introduction to Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke’s speech at
the Freedom Center’s 2015 West Coast Retreat. The event was held March
6-8 in Palos Verdes, CA.

When Peter Collier and I left the Left 30 years ago we took an
inventory of what their successes were so we would focus our efforts on
fighting them where they had essentially won ground, and we saw that
they had captured already our universities and our schools and the
media, but I also noted because I had spent years fighting for civil
rights since I was a child that the Left had taken over the political
structure of the black community. It was totally dominated by the Left,
which is how two race hustlers and extortionists managed to succeed
Martin Luther King as the head of the so-called civil rights movement. I
knew that the Left’s domination of the black community was very bad
news for African Americans in this country.

Progressives and Democrats control every major city of any size and
every major inner city of any size in America, as you’ve heard me say
before. Everything’s that’s wrong with the inner cities of America,
that policy can affect progressives, leftists, Democrats are responsible
for. They have monopoly control in all these cities: Chicago,
Detroit, Philadelphia, St. Louis. There’s not a Republican in sight.
Progressive welfare policies destroyed the black family beginning in the
1960s. Seventy-five percent of African American children were born to
two parents at that time. Now, 80 percent in the inner cities are born
out of wedlock. The absence of a father and authority figure in the
home, often complicated when the mother works as well as raising her
children, has produced a series of pathologies which we summarize as the
underclass, which were predicted by Daniel Moynihan in 1965, of
violence, drug abuse, and criminality.

Leftists controlled all the public schools in which inner city kids
are failing, all these failed schools that year in and year out don’t
teach the kids basic tools they need to succeed, so that 30 to 40
percent of inner city kids don’t graduate and 30 to 40 percent of those
who do graduate functionally illiterate and will never get a shot at the
American dream, and yet, all the Democrats in Congress send their kids
to private schools. They fight vouchers. They won’t let these kids get
a private school education, including the President of the United
States, they get it for their kids, and it’s always very, very
frustrating to me to watch this taking place and not know exactly what
could be done about it, which I’ll get to in a moment.

Now, we’re witnessing a war against the police conducted by the same
Left. I can tell you exactly when that war began. It began with the
creation of the Black Panther party in the 1960s, who patrolled the
streets with loaded shotguns and harassed police officers making
arrests, and started this mythology of a vast police oppression in the
inner cities. I was a radical as you know at that time and I bought
into this, and when the police were investigating the Panthers, I bought
the argument that it’s a racist police force and they’re harassing the
Panthers because they’re militant black leaders. I raised a lot of
money to buy a school for the Panthers. They used the school money to
buy drugs. They conducted drug deals in the school. There was a
fatality. A friend of mine, whom I had recruited to keep the books in
the school, was murdered and that was the end of my career in the left,
but I did investigations for many years after that. They had killed
13 people that I could identify, all of them black except this woman.

When I left the Left, I joined the Open Athletic Club and my workout
partner was a recently retired head of homicide, and I said to him why
didn’t you guys ever nail Huey Newton and the Black Panthers, and he
said, oh, we never wanted to get a call from that side of town because
you guys would be on our ass, calling us racists, saying, “police
brutality,” and you’d have your lawyers all over us and your press all
over us, and I had an epiphany in that moment that the left, the
progressive left, the civil rights left is a protection racket for black
criminals and for criminals generally.

We witnessed in Ferguson a 4-month modern-day lynch mob convict the
cop because he’s white, convict him in advance of the evidence or else,
and then when the evidence comes in and shows that this individual was
resisting arrest — I mean how many people would attack an armed police
officer in his police car, and that police officer was fighting for his
life — and yet so powerful is this leftist ideology that you have sports
athletes, hero figures to American youth, “hands up, don’t shoot,” or
“can’t breathe,” an assault on the police force.

Eric Holder, a leader of that lynch mob, had just issued his report
from Ferguson. Even though he had all these leftwing lawyers looking
for evidence, anything they could twist into saying that the cop was
racist, they couldn’t find any evidence whatsoever for the incident that
triggered their investigation, but they have indicted the whole police
force. And how are they indicted? Sixty-seven percent of Ferguson
residents are African American. Ninety-three percent of the arrests are
of African Americans. That disparity is their evidence of racism.
Well, I’ve got news for them. There’s other statistics. Black males
constitute 6 percent of the population and they are responsible for 40
to 50 percent of all violent crimes. That explains that other
disparity. If you’ve committed a crime, you’re going to be arrested.
And there’s another statistic. Ninety-five percent of the victims of
black criminals are blacks.

What the Left has done, what the Democratic Party is doing is making
African Americans, who are unfortunate to have to live in the inner
cities, victims of crime. You see that in New York already. Because of
De Blasio stopping the stop and frisk policy, murders are up
20 percent. Now, another thing the Left has done — they’ve done it to
us nationally in many areas like our universities, but to the black
community as well — is to create a one-party state, which means if you
stand up to them, you are going to be cut down. I have a lot of scars
to show, but it’s nothing compared to what black conservatives or blacks
who challenge this orthodoxy — they don’t have to be even conservative,
just challenge this orthodoxy — have to bear.

In the midst of these terrible national events and this incredible
tragedy for the black community, because there is suffering doing [sic] on
right now because of what Eric Holder and Barack Obama and his advisor
on race relations, the chief lynch mob leader in the country, Al
Sharpton, and a criminal himself, have done, is there is so much
suffering going on. Our guest today, in the midst of this wave of
bigotry against police — I mean they attacked the New York Police
Department whose majority are Hispanics and blacks, not even a white
majority, as racist. Suddenly, you see on your television screens a
voice speaking reason, speaking the truth, defending the facts, and not
backing down doing it.

Our guest today has been a Sheriff of Milwaukee for 13 years, and
because Milwaukee is one of these cities that has all these pathologies,
but is controlled politically and has been for I can’t remember, I
think it’s a hundred years, by the Democratic Party, Sheriff Clarke runs
as a Democrat, just to give you an idea of the environment that he has
to operate in. I’ve learned in politics, if Victor Davis Hanson was
here, he would tell you in words, to turn a tide, to turn a battle, you
need people who are ready to stand up and fight. It’s very, very
difficult to be the first ones out there, standing up and taking the
fire.

Our guest today, David Clarke, is an American hero. I wrote a book called Hating Whitey and other Progressive Clauses,
and I learned from that experience that there’s no way that, even
though I had spent my life fighting in civil rights struggles, even
though I had supported the Black Panther Party, there’s no way my voice
would be listened to because this ideology of the left is a racist
ideology, so as a white person, none of my words mean anything, but on
the other hand, if you were black, as my teachers, Tom Sowell, Walter
Williams have experienced, you get the worst kind of attacks, or Tim
Scott, our Republican Senator from South Carolina, you’re called a race
traitor and other ugly, ugly names.

So I am really proud and honored to introduce to you today this man
who has stood up and I will tell you there were many, many young African
Americans watching him on television who will hopefully turn the tide
in the next generation, David Clarke.David HorowitzSource: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2015/frontpagemag-com/david-horowitz-the-lefts-destruction-of-inner-city-communities/ Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

When someone punches you in the face, there are three ways to fight
back: One, you punch him back. Two, you complain to authorities. Three,
you drive him crazy.

Unfortunately, pro-Israel groups on U.S. campuses are very good at
complaining, but very bad at punching back or driving our enemies crazy.

And let’s not mince words — the BDS movement is an enemy movement.
Groups like Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) have no interest in
promoting peace between Israel and Palestinians. What they want to do is
punch Israel in the face. Forget anti-Semitism — it’s bad enough that
these groups are single-mindedly focused on crushing Israel any way they
can.

So, how are pro-Israel groups fighting back against this onslaught?
Mostly by complaining. It’s getting so bad that we’re settling for lame
resolutions that condemn anti-Semitism. Uh, no kidding.

When one Jew — David Horowitz of the Freedom Center — tried punching
back recently at UCLA, he got attacked by…other Jews. “We don’t fight
like that!” was their message. “We don’t stoop to their level!”

Horowitz fought back
with a nasty poster campaign that ridiculed the word “Justice” in the
name Students for Justice in Palestine. By showing the horror of what a
Palestinian group like Hamas can do to other Palestinians, he was
basically saying: Now THIS is an injustice against Palestinians worth
fighting. He was exposing SJP’s hypocrisy.

Whether you agreed with the posters or not, they were a punch in the face.

Now, I acknowledge that the great majority of pro-Israel groups are
not comfortable with this approach. They’re more comfortable with things
like “education” and “debates” and submitting complaints to authorities
and editorial columns and peaceful demonstrations.

I have sympathy for that view. I also love a great debate or a great
editorial or a great letter. The problem, of course, is that we’re
dealing with an enemy that has no interest in those things. The BDS
movement attacks Israel with bare knuckles, while Jews often fight back
with complaint letters.

So far, nothing we do seems to work. Our enemy just keeps punching
away. Frankly, if their goal is to crush us, I don’t blame them.

But if we insist on not punching back, then we should at least fight back with option 3: Drive our enemies crazy.

How do we do that? By turning the image of Israel upside down: Not only is Israel not worthy of a boycott, it’s actually the #1 solution to the problems the Middle East.

This is not just a clever strategy, it’s also true: If every country
in the Middle East offered the same human rights and civil rights as
Israel does, the whole region would be a lot better off. No one can
argue with that.

Pro-Israel groups should stop dignifying anti-Israel groups with
reactions to their attacks. If they want to make some real headway in
this war of messages, they must create a new, fresh, positive attack
line: Israel is the solution to the Middle East.

This shock and awe approach will disarm and confuse the enemy.

Sure, they will continue to malign Israel any way they can. Nothing will stop that. But that’s even more reason to strengthen the image of Israel. You don’t strengthen an image by defensing yourself.

Right now, anti-Israel groups are exploiting the Achilles heel of
Israel’s image — the conflict with the Palestinians. Let’s face it, that
problem ain’t going away any time soon. But Israel is a lot more than
that conflict. It is the only society in the region that allows the
freedom to make things better. That simple freedom alone can transform
the region.

The key to communication is to start with accepted truths. These are
the two big truths of the Middle East that work to Israel’s advantage:
One, the region is a chaotic, violent mess that tramples on human
rights, and two, no country in the region offers more rights and
freedoms and economic opportunities than Israel.

I don’t have to draw a blueprint. Pro-Israel groups are smart enough
to put that together. What they need is to change their messaging.

Position Israel as a key resource to help transform the Middle East and you will drive the BDS people crazy.

If Hillary thought that press conference would tamp down the controversy, she was deluding herself.

Aides
to former President Bill Clinton expressed concern as far back as 2009
that adding Hillary Clinton's email account to the private server in
their Long Island home would be an invitation for hackers, according to a
story in the Wall Street Journal:

A
private server had obvious advantages. It would give Mrs. Clinton more
control over her email, people familiar with her team’s reasoning said.
Privately, aides of the former president worried that adding her account
would make the system a target for hackers. They also weren’t aware she
would use it for all her official correspondence.That
decision has now invited the kind of relentless public scrutiny it was
designed to avoid, while also maximizing Mrs. Clinton’s control over
sensitive email correspondence that she might not want to get out.In
addition, though Mrs. Clinton plans to run a 2016 presidential campaign
focused on the future, the email furor has evoked bitter controversies
from her past, in particular the notion that she is overly secretive in
her dealings.Mrs.
Clinton didn’t appear to violate any laws in choosing to use private
email, but she did run afoul of long-standing guidelines over the use of
private email and likely prevented official records from being entered
into the public record in a timely fashion.

Republicans
from several committees, including the Select Committee on Benghazi,
want to examine the 32,000 emails that Hillary says she may have
destroyed. Access to that private server is vital if any documents are
to be retrieved. It may be possible to restore at least some of the
emails if a forensic analysis of the server can be undertaken.

It
seems clear that Clinton will fight any effort to do that. The
Republicans will probably have to go to court to get them - a longshot
given the privacy issues involved and lack of evidence that any crime
was committed. But we are only at the beginning of this probe and it's
possible emails will surface from other sources that would suggest other
avenues of investigation.

If Hillary thought that press conference would tamp down the controversy, she was deluding herself.

Mr. President, did you cut a deal with Mrs. Clinton’s
husband that permits her to get away with this type of behavior? Mr.
President, is it true that there are standards of behavior for Bill and
Hillary Clinton and their friends and other standards for the rest of
us?

Hillary Rodham Clinton,
the former first lady, U.S. senator from New York and secretary of
state, used a private email server for all of her emails when she was
President Obama’s secretary of state from 2009 to 2013.

During
that time, she enjoyed a security clearance identical to that of the
president, the secretary of defense, the director of the CIA and others.
It is the highest level of clearance the government makes available.

She
had that classified clearance so that she could do her job, which
involved knowing and working with military, diplomatic and sensitive
national security secrets. The government guards those secrets by
requiring high-ranking government officials to keep the documents and
emails that reflect them in a secure government-approved venue and to
return any retained records when leaving office.

I have not seen Mrs. Clinton’s
signature on any documents, but standard government procedure is for
her to have signed an agreement under oath when she began her work at
the State Department requiring her to safeguard classified records, and
another agreement under oath when she ended her work that she had
returned all records to the government.

She violated both agreements, and she violated numerous federal laws.

By using her personal email address — @clintonemail.com — she kept her work documents from the government. Concealing government documents from the government
when you work for it is a felony, punishable by up to three years in
prison and permanent disqualification from holding public office.

Failing to secure classified secrets in a government-approved facility or moving them to a non-secure facility outside the government’s
control is a misdemeanor, punishable by a hefty fine and a year in
jail. Using a false email address that gives the clear impression that
the user is not using a government server when she is, or one that
creates the false impression that the emailer is using a government
server when she is not, is also a felony.

The legal issues in Mrs. Clinton’s
case are all the more curious when one hears Mr. Obama’s tepid reaction
to this latest scandal. Asked by Bill Plante of CBS News last weekend
when he first learned of Mrs. Clinton’s use of a personal email server instead of the government‘s,
the president told Mr. Plante he learned of it from the media, last
week, when the rest of us did. He later had his press secretary state
that he did recognize her use of a nongovernmental email address, but
did not know it was unlawful or unsecured until last week.

Does the White House not know where the president’s emails are coming from and where they are going?

I
wish Mr. Plante had followed up with that question and more: Mr.
President, are you not troubled that your secretary of state had a
non-secure email account and used it for all of her work? Are you not
troubled that she might have kept classified secrets on a server in her
barn on her estate in Chappaqua, New York, that the Secret Service might
or might not have known about, or at a computer company in Texas that
the Secret Service was unable to protect?

Does it not trouble you,
Mr. President, that foreign intelligence services likely would have had
a far easier time hacking into the emails of your secretary of state
because of all this? Mr. President, will your Department of Justice
prosecute Mrs. Clinton
for retaining 48 months of classified records on her personal server
after she left office, as it did Gen. David Petraeus, who kept 15 months
of classified records in a desk drawer in his home after he left
office?

Mr. President, the premise of the law regulating government records is that the government owns them all, and when a high-ranking government official leaves office, the ex-official may ask the government for copies of her personal emails, and the government decides which ones it will give her. Mr. President, don’t you realize that Mrs. Clinton turned the law on its head by keeping all of her emails from the government?

Thus, rather than the government deciding which emails were personal, Mrs. Clinton decided which emails were governmental, and she turned those over to the government. How does the government
know what is contained in the emails she kept? Mr. President, this is a
privilege that even you don’t have, and it is the very behavior that
the laws you have sworn to uphold were written to prevent.

Mr. President, did you cut a deal with Mrs. Clinton’s
husband that permits her to get away with this type of behavior? Mr.
President, is it true that there are standards of behavior for Bill and
Hillary Clinton and their friends and other standards for the rest of
us?

Mr. President, do you remember that crackpot Sandy Berger, who
was Bill Clinton’s national security adviser from 1997 to 2001, and Mrs. Clinton’s
foreign policy adviser when she ran against you in 2008, and who stole
documents from the National Archives in 2003 by hiding them under an
on-site construction trailer? Do you know that Bill got Sandy a
no-jail-time deal, including the return of his security clearance, and
he got Sandy’s prosecutor a federal judgeship?

Mr. President, when you ran against Hillary Clinton, you promised the most transparent government in history. Do you honestly think you have given us that?

Andrew
P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is
an analyst for the Fox News Channel. He has written seven books on the
U.S. Constitution.Source: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/mar/11/andrew-napolitano-do-hillary-and-bill-clinton-get-/ Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.